Ambrosia
by Aiko Isari
Summary: (Xros Wars) AT, post series. Zenjirou has spent every summer since his accident in the countryside. During one of these trips, a young man moves into his house. For better or for worse, the universe has a habit of making things happen.
1. Person at the Broken Door

_This is the right fic, now guys. Sorry. I posted the wrong fic this morning._

* * *

1\. The Person at the Broken Door

Zenjirou pulled his car to a stop, feeling it creak and sputter its way up the dirt driveway. He mussed up his mass of brown hair with a sigh. He would have to go to the car shop at some point this week. He gave the hood an affectionate pat as he closed its door behind him. "Just a little longer," he told the old thing, going to his trunk and opening it. "I'll take you to rest when I can afford a new one." Three hundred years from now, but he wouldn't tell the car that.

He smiled to himself as he looked up at the rickety house. It looked worse than it was, but then, that didn't take much. The outside door creaked in the wind and he pulled it tight behind him as he went inside. More repairs to ask for help on, more to occupy him. Ah well, it was a summer routine.

Zenjirou sneezed at the dust. "Sheesh!" He laughed. "Least Okajima-san could have done was aired it out." He supposed this was another first day spent cleaning and airing out his bedroom. It was time to try and remember where all the cleaning supplies were from the last time. He sneezed again and went onward, opening doors and kicking up more dust.

This was a lot better than wallowing in summer homework. He had three weeks before he could start that.

He threw another window open and coughed. It would be a few hours before he could use anything this far in. He leaned out to breathe and blinked at the sight of a small car going up on the dirt road. A new person out here? He went downstairs to see it pull up near his own. Zenjirou tried not to frown. A chill had gone up his spine. He didn't get gut feelings that much, not since his accident.

He licked his lips as the driver's door opened, ready to risk his legs and run to his own car.

His first thought was that there had been a child at the wheel. The driver looked cherubic, smiling and small, a tough stockiness to the limbs and tanned skin. The scars on his face and arms seemed more like nicks to porcelain than injuries against skin.

"Hullo there," he said, and Zenjirou felt his mouth dry. Well, at least that proved a child wasn't the one driving. "Are you Tsurugi Zenjirou-san?"

"Y-yes, I mean," He fumbled and let out a sheepish laugh. "Sorry, not used to company all the way out here." The other smiled, one of those polite expressions that meant the user was trying not to laugh. "I'm Zenjirou, and this is my summer project." He paused. "Well, my many summer project. It's always a work in progress."

The other chuckled. "It doesn't look that bad…" His eyes wandered the well-worn porch. "You've done a lot..."

"Speak for yourself."

Another laugh. A person with an easy smile and a friendly face. It wasn't like the people up here were nasty or something, but this was almost unnatural. "I'm Taiki," he said, eyes bright and holding out his hand to shake. "Someone named Okajima asked me to come help out up here so I don't spend my summer asleep."

"Have you done it before?" This guy screamed the opposite of lazy.

"No, but we don't want to start a trend."

Zenjirou laughed again. "Well, you don't have to worry, I'll definitely keep you busy. Want to take a look around?"

Taiki smiled again and nodded, going to open the backseat of the car.

When a dog leaped from the backseat, Zenjirou smiled all the wider.

This person would fit in just fine.

* * *

 _ **A/N:** _ Hello! Another challenge fill. Mostly fluffy, somewhat adventurous. Let's see where destiny takes us! This will take place about five years after the series, and Zenjirou has changed a bit from the hyperactive, somewhat dramatic kid of canon. Of course, that kid still exists. He just has to come out and show himself.

Challenges: Tale in fragments, list 35, prompt- trashy, Pairing Diversity prompt 28: another way, and what-if: What if Zenjirou had not pursued Taiki for a kendo rematch?

Please review if you've made it this far. Whether you liked it or not is just fine! :D


	2. There's a Place for You

2\. There's a Place For You

Zenjirou sighed in relief as he threw his shirt off into the bin. The dusty rooms were finally clean. His clothes were covered in grey and his arms ached. "Three days..." he muttered. He ought to pay someone to check up on this place once in a while. His mother would be furious, but she would get over it. He looked at his watch. Well so much for the garden. He went downstairs.

As he passed the kitchen, his nose was hit by the smell of spices. He peeked in as quietly as he could, only to meet Taiki's gaze from across the room.

"All done?"

Zenjirou laughed, covering the surprise as best as he could. How did he always know? "Just finished. You may want to keep your window open though until the smell wears off."

"It's fine." Taiki waved the hand not holding the spoon. "It's still warm out. Are you hungry yet?"

Zenjirou nodded a little. "Let me wash off first. I feel like I fell asleep in an old attic." He hurried away, feeling Taiki's puzzled gaze on his back. He paused to take a deep breath and exhale. This was... weird. He shook himself and went to the bathroom. He was way too used to having his own space. A flatmate wasn't that bad, and Taiki was good so far. Granted, one of them had to keep the dog from following Zenjirou wherever he went, or the house would be even worse.

Said dog was laying by the toilet, spread out like a small, furry carpet.

Zenjirou put his hands on his hips and pretended to glare at the animal, who only peeked open a sleepy eye. "I'm gonna take a shower, you want to be drenched?"

Yuri grunted and sat up, shaking yellow furs onto the floor and trotting out. Zenjirou pretended to glare and shut the door behind him.

About twenty minutes later, he returned to the kitchen. "Good timing. Just finished." Taiki spooned soup into bowls without looking up. Zenjirou rolled his eyes. One of these days he would manage to sneak up on him.

"Need help?"

Taiki shook his head. "You're the one who was upstairs all day. Don't worry."

He was a nice guy, and somehow, that was unnerving.

"What's up?"

Zenjirou blinked, looking down at the tray. He waved a sheepish hand. "Nothing, nothing! I was just thinking... is your mom a really bad cook?"

Taiki laughed. "She's not bad, just... sometimes she doesn't put bones into the bowl to flavor the stock." Zenjirou nodded and Taiki continued. "She's taught me what I know, anyway. How is it?"

Zenjirou swallowed another bite and grinned. "Fine, of course."

A sheepish laugh left the other's mouth. "Of course? Forward comment."

"Well," Zenjirou pretended to think about it. "if I lie, I'm going back to miso soup and ramen."

Taiki raised a playful eyebrow. "We can do plenty to those kinds of foods."

They both laughed and the meal passed in peaceful silence.

* * *

Zenjirou woke up hours later in his bed. He yawned and rolled over. Grabbing his empty glass, he grimaced and went down to the kitchen. Passing Taiki's room, he paused to see the door ajar.

"Kudo-kun?"

The room was silent, but there was a low grunting noise near the kitchen door. Yuri raised one ear, then snorted, rolling onto his side.

Zenjirou stepped over him to fill his glass, then went over, kneeling to scratch at the fur. "Where's your master at?" Not like he could have gotten far, there was nothing exciting for kilometers. Yuri's tail swished and Zenjirou took that as an answer. After one last scratch, he straightened and went to look.

Wandering out to the porch, he found Taiki fast asleep outside. Something was clutched in his fingers. His chest rose and fell in a slow rhythm.

 _Oh, so I_ can _sneak up on you._

He was lucky it was warm out. Guy could have caught a cold. Zenjirou moved to shake him. Taiki mumbled but didn't wake. His heart gave a gentle thud, but he ignored it.

Taiki still didn't wake up and Zenjirou sighed. He couldn't just pick him up. Probably not anyway.

He went to go get a blanket.

By the time he returned, whatever was in Taiki's fingers had started to glow.

He was pretty sure that wasn't normal.

* * *

 ** _A/N:_** Hey, it's back! Sorry for the delay, and the wrong chapter being up the other day. It's all fixed now, dunno what happened there. Thank you reviewers for catching. I'll go back to fix the errors soonish. It has been a busy time out here, so... lucky me, power's back on! Anyway, off to more fics I go. Thanks for everything and please drop a line if you can!


	3. This World Has Secrets

3\. This World Has Secrets

They settled into a routine after that. Zenjirou couldn't find it in himself to talk to his housemate about the strange, glowing light he had carried around. Well, he supposed it was more accurate to say he had slept around it, but thinking of it that way made the whole thing _more_ awkward.

Even so, he still found Taiki asleep outside once or twice, glowing or not. He usually managed to wake him then.

If Taiki noticed the awkwardness, he didn't say anything. He just left in his worn car to get groceries and seeds or dog food twice a week and cleaned up. Zenjirou was afraid to mess with the rest of the house at this point. He needed someone who knew a little about repairing old houses aside from the obvious. So they were left with five extra, empty rooms that would likely never see the light of day again.

Zenjirou let out a sigh, looking over at the messy remnants of a garden. He couldn't think on that now, or the mysterious light. He could just ask Taiki about the latter, and he had land to prepare. Summer plants weren't impossible and all.

He grabbed his straw hat from the hook and pulled on his gardening gloves. It was going to be a long day.

Two hours of work later, something caught Zenjirou's eye. A tiny green light popped up by a tree. He straightened and it winked out of view, only to appear again a few seconds after.

Common sense said to go back inside and wait until it was gone, or to at least ignore it. Curiosity told him to check it out. Unfortunately, Zenjirou never listened to common sense unless it was someone else doing something dangerous. So after putting his tools down, he went to investigate. At the tree, there was nothing. Zenjirou scratched his head, puzzled. He had seen that light there. Maybe it was just a surprised firefly. Then he yelped, seeing the spark of green. Nope, way too big to be a firefly. They were further away than he had thought, heading towards the road. Zenjirou picked himself up and moved closer. "Is somebody there?"

Silence.

Zenjirou waited a minute more before calling out again. "Is someone here?"

The leaves rustled near his feet, and he took no notice. Then something lunged and struck Zenjirou in the back. Zenjirou coughed and stumbled. Pain exploded over his injured side. He toppled over and hit the ground. There was a loud snarl near his ear and the light exploded in front of his eyelids. Green light was struck by a blur and Zenjirou thought he heard the sound of Taiki shouting. It was hard to tell through the pain in his head. He let go for a moment, trying to relax, to calm the screaming of his muscles.

When he zoned back in, he was laying on a blanket. Careful fingers moved deftly over a long scratch. Zenjirou hissed in pain.

"Sorry," he heard above his head.

"Taiki...kun?"

"Yeah." There was a shuffle. "You got attacked while you were gardening. Got a nasty scratch on your back. Pretty long one."

"Another one?" Zenjirou managed a sigh, then winced. "Great, right on my bad side."

He could almost feel Taiki wince. "Sorry about that…"

Zenjirou shook his head. "It's not your fault… do you know what attacked me?"

Taiki was silent. Then he nodded.

Zenjirou thought back to the light in his flatmate's hands. "What… was it?"

Taiki let out a tiny sigh. "It was a monster. But don't worry, it won't hurt you anymore."

"That's not a good answer!" He would have snapped louder if it weren't for the insistent throbbing that he do no such thing.

Taiki nodded, still rubbing antiseptig over the wound. "I'm sorry. I should give you a better one. But you won't believe the real one."

"I can try." Honestly, he probably shouldn't. But that sounded like a challenge, and Zenjirou could never resist a challenge.

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 ** _A/N:_** For the prompt "finger". Please leave a review if you can, and thank you for all of the support so far!


	4. An Old Legendary Child

_For the prompt - dramatic._

* * *

4\. An Old Legendary Child

Taiki stared at him for a moment. His eyes grew weary, even somewhere close to sullen. Then he sighed. "All right... well, I guess the best place to start is with _this_." He pulled out the red toy Zenjirou had seen glow nights before. Before he could ask what it was, Taiki held it out and spoke softly. "Reload, Shoutmon."

Zenjirou reared back as the room flashed green.

The light faded into a short red dragon with a white stomach. It stretched and opened bright blue eyes, rubbing a small array of scars on its nose. It turned to Taiki. "You find the weirdest people, man."

"Hope you include yourself," Taiki shot back with a smile. The dragon snorted and looked at Zenjirou again, who was trying to get as close to the exit as possible without hurting his back..

"Dude, I ain't gonna eat you. Chillax."

"What the hell are you?" Zenjirou shouted. "An alien, a monster, a hallucination?" Just what had he gotten himself into?

"Chillax," the dragon repeated, rolling his eyes. "I'm Shoutmon, I saved your ass earlier. You're welcome."

Zenjirou looked at Taiki, mouth gaping. Taiki smiled a little. "Shoutmon is a Digimon, to be specific, he's their current ruler. He and I have been partners for a long time."

"Yeah, he got me crowned like the awesome man he is!"

Taiki rolled his eyes at Shoutmon, whether at the distinct lack of an indoor voice or his boasting, it was hard to say. "The thing that attacked you earlier was a Digimon. They're appearing more and more lately because of the barriers between the two worlds." As he spoke, his voice grew more and more closed off, eyes looking outside. "In the past, there were wars. With my friends, we won, but they cut up the barriers in the process. They're still healing, so it's easier for malevolent Digimon to slip through."

Zenjirou turned this over. "What does this have to do with me being attacked?" His voice jumped. He had come out here for his vacation, not to be caught up some alien hallucination.

Taiki shook his head. "I don't know. I didn't come here to figure that out. But now, we'll be looking into it." He smiled a little. "Don't worry, we'll protect you."

Zenjirou couldn't speak, not even to stop Taiki from leaving the room. This was too much.

* * *

Taiki waited for Shoutmon to shut his door before he sighed and sat down. "That could have been better."

"Coulda let him talk." Shoutmon didn't sound annoyed, more amused. He wasn't the only one who could bulldoze conversations.

"He is injured," Taiki pointed out. "Didn't want to have him jump around and things like that."

Shoutmon snorted, laying back on the bed. "True that." He let out a sigh. "Wonder why him..."

Taiki shook his head. "He must have the Code, same as us. You said that rogue group was looking for Codes, wasn't it?"

Shoutmon nodded, scratching his nose "But last I heard, they ain't got the tech to do anything with 'em. Either way, the others will keep lookin' into it whether I'm there or not, so let's just chill and wait."

Taiki laughed. "Not much else we can do, I guess." He stood up. "I'm gonna start dinner. Want a bit?"

"What do you think?"

Taiki laughed again and went to the kitchen. As he passed Zenjirou's room, he sobered. Zenjirou seemed like a nice person. He didn't want to get him involved in this fight.

If he was though, it was the least Taiki could do was get him out all right.


	5. The Windows Cleaned

_for the prompt blue-eyed._

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5\. The Windows Cleaned

Days passed in quiet. There wasn't silence exactly, but quiet, formal comments across the room or the house. Yuri moved between them like a shedding ghost. They didn't really look at each other either. Zenjirou would sometimes look at Taiki and open his mouth, then ignore him and go on with his business. Taiki barely looked up when he did, was hardly even around to begin with. That dragon, Shoutmon, wasn't ever back, but the Xros Loader never left Taiki's sight. Sometimes it glowed, but Taiki always left the room when it did, as if to spare him.

Shame. As much as Zenjirou didn't want to admit it, he wanted to study it a little. It seemed pretty powerful.

Now that the initial shock had worn off, Zenjirou could admit he was interested. _Very_ interested at that. That didn't make him any less terrified out of his wits, but he could think clearly. He had been attacked, with no idea why or who or how come. Taiki was looking into it somehow, which meant he was safest with the other around. The only problem was… he didn't quite want him to stay around anymore. What if he had caused Zenjirou to be attacked in the first place just by being here with a powerful… Digimon? Such a weird word.

Honestly, it made him nervous to go into the garden again. But he had to. He had to work the land, grow something. It had always soothed him before. He just had to avoid the wooded area, that was all. That was what he did.

That was how he saw the car drive up one day. It wasn't Taiki's; he had taken Yuri for a grooming session. It was smaller, newer, and a soft shade of red. A young woman stepped out, helping another from the car. The first looked up, red hair circling her shoulders. Spotting him, she smiled and jerked her head to beckon him over.

Zenjirou put down the gardening tools and went over, despite misgivings. He had needed to take a break anyway. He had never seen either of these girls before. "Good morning," he began, feeling awkward. "How can I help you?"

"You're Zenjirou-kun, right?" The redhead spoke first, the brunette stretching from the car ride. "I'm Hinomoto Akari, and this is Amano Nene. We're friends of Taiki's."

Nene smiled and dipped her head. "It's a pleasure to meet you."

"Same to you." Zenjirou scratched his head, trying not to squirm. "Unfortunately, my flatmate's out right now…"

"Yeah, we asked him before we left." Akari waved her hand in a flippant gesture., smirking a little "We wanted to talk to you anyway, what with what happened."

Zenjirou felt his blood run cold. "You… know about that?"

"We fought in the Wars," Nene replied with a small sigh. Zenjirou flinched. "Taiki-kun told us you were attacked and what he had said to you."

"Unfortunately," Akari let out a playful groan. "He didn't say much to you about it because he wants to protect you and he can be very secretive when he wants to help people."

"Even to you," Nene murmured and Akari's hackles rose in jest.

"Best friend rights to call him out on that Nene, always," she quipped, before turning back to Zenjirou. "So we're here to talk about it with you, if that's all right. It's not exactly a fun experience."

Zenjirou hesitated. On the one hand, he'd rather not get involved in something that seemed as shady as this. On the other, he was already in it, wasn't he? He should learn as much as he can, so he would be prepared next time.

His back twinged. He nodded at them. "Sure. Let's talk inside."

Both smiled. He wondered if he had made the right decision.


	6. The Rain Falls Far

_To clarify, this is working on the verse of the manga canon._

* * *

6\. The Rain Falls Far

Zenjirou didn't sit down, didn't even relax until the girls were sipping their tea. And even then, it was difficult. They were chatting normally, as if they hadn't mentioned near-death experiences and violence only moments before. When he sat down, wincing at the pain in his back, the two girls looked up from their chatter. He rested his hands on the table, somehow desperate to delay this conversation. "How is it?"

Nene smiled as if to soothe him. "It's wonderful. Did you make the blend yourself?"

"Yeah, actually!" He smiled a little, feeling a bit embarrassed but proud of himself. "I grow the herbs out here or at a little home garden. It's not as much fun as mechanical work, but well," His smile turned sheepish. "I like it as a hobby."

"I like it a lot," Akari agreed with a bright grin, one a little too light. They sat quietly, sipping their tea. Then Nene began, lowering her mug onto a coaster.

"You know the basics of what happened, yes?"

Zenjirou nodded. "A little. There were wars with Digimon and…. Shoutmon won them? And now there are Digimon showing up in our world, right?"

Akari nodded, sipping the tea still. "That's about right. A fallen angel started a war to determine if the Digital World could be saved. They lost… to us and the armies who eventually united to defeat him. There were a lot of little fights after that. Took a long time, but…" She trailed off and grinned. "Well, we won, didn't we? Wouldn't be here if we hadn't."

Considering those monsters, Zenjirou was honestly surprised they were there at all. Even so. He watched her eyes flit between him, Nene, and the ground, like there was something there only she could see. He wasn't getting the whole story, but there was no one in their right mind who would tell that to a stranger. "That's true… but Taiki-kun, he told me a lot of this already." He grimaced. "Sorry, that was really rude."

Akari shook her head. "No, no, sorry, we're going to get there. The wars were heavy. It's a good thing he mentioned that. You see, the human world was affected by these wars. It had to be, or we wouldn't have been involved. The day we got thrown into the war is the day the two worlds were basically supposed to end."

Zenjirou could only stare. _What?_

Nene nodded. "We in a general sense, we were brought together in similar times.. though my sister and I much earlier than the others. The Digital World and the human one are linked. The way our world works affects the Digital One, such as the advancement of technology or the state of the human heart, or the collective consciousness. That's what we've guessed anyway, the Digital World's history has always changed according to the way our world has worked. Or something. It's quite strange. Which brings us to you."

Those were two phrases a person probably wasn't meant to hear in one conversation, especially not in a row. "Me?" Zenjirou found himself sitting up straighter.

Akari nodded. "All of us, somehow, have something that connects us to the Digimon. For a few of us, it was a power called the Xros Code. For me, it was…"

"Your courage," Nene supplied and Akari rolled her eyes.

"Sounds cheesy when you put it that way, like an anime or something. But yeah." Akari smiled at Zenjirou. "It's exactly like that. And the Digimon want it. So.. .we need to figure out what it is. Or people will get hurt. Even in a rural place like this."

"Wait," Zenjirou interrupted. "Why wasn't I with you then? If I'm being hunted now, why wasn't I back then?"

Both girls sighed. And, unfortunately, that was the answer.

The rain continued to pour.


	7. A Friend Indeed

7\. A Friend Indeed

Taiki returned just as the girls prepared to leave. At the sight of them, his eyes brightened and he almost let go of the leash to hug them both. Akari rolled her eyes and hugged him right back, letting Nene take hold of the now-excitable dog, who licked her face with all the joy in the world. It was a weird sight for Zenjirou since the dog seemed to hate him. Or at least was generally annoyed with him.

Eventually the girls had to leave and both waved goodbye (Nene after playfully asking for his He tensed as soon as the car left the driveway, waving after Akari's hand as she disappeared inside the vehicle. Taiki turned back to him. "So, how were they?" Taiki asked before an awkward silence could settle over them. "What you expected from friends of mine?"

Zenjirou tilted his head in confusion. What had he been expecting? "They were nice!" he said with a grin. "Weirdly understanding."

"Good." Taiki scratched his head and then grabbed Yuri's collar.. "I was worried they would come in guns blazing and proclaiming you were attacking me or something. Akari can do that when she's worried about me. Especially since we're out in the countryside."

"You've got a good friend, there," Zenjirou replied, laughing at the image of the two girls making him shrink in his chair. It really wouldn't have surprised him if they had done that. Heck, he had expected that himself.

Taiki smiled back at him, and it was still cute. "They'll be your friends too… actually they probably already are."

Zenjirou grinned. "They didn't seem to want to let me go," he joked. "Fished for compliments and everything."

"I doubt they were fishing." The utter seriousness of Taiki's response just made Zenjirou laugh harder.

Just like that, the awkward fog in the air cleared and they went inside.

* * *

Taiki woke with a mild headache. At the lack of sunlight in the room, he sat up and looked out the window. Yuri stared at him from by the bed, his dark eyes wide. He whuffed. Taiki scratched behind an ear and left the room. His Xros Loader glowed softly in the dark. Shoutmon's face flickered into view and vanished again as he walked. Taiki glanced at Zenjirou's door as he passed and smiled a little. Then he kept walking. It was still too big of a risk to bring him into fight. Not until there was someone to protect him.

He slid the door shut as quietly as possible and the air rippled, the temperature going up about ten sighed to himself, wiping sweat from his brow. "All right, look what's back. You guys ready?"

Shoutmon grunted. "Unfortunately. Freaking stone monsters."

"That too." Taiki lifted the device. "All right, Time Shift."

The light woke Zenjirou but by the time he had rushed down the stairs, Taiki was gone. But the portal wasn't.

Without much thought into the matter, he jumped in after him.


	8. The Green Light Says Go

8\. The Green Light Says Go

Zenjirou didn't open his eyes as he ran. He was kind of afraid his eyes would be burned out if he tried to look. On the other hand, he wasn't sure what he was running into, only that normal air was gone and everything felt like he was under a heat lamp. None of these sensations were comforting in the slightest. Yet, because curiosity killed only half of the cats that he knew of, he opened his eyes as he touched the ground once more. His eyes grew wide and he couldn't help but think of a post-apocalyptic story, where the sun was long gone. He stepped forward, eyes wide. THe portal shut behind him and he turned. Zenjirou's eyes went to roll out of their sockets.

"What happened to my house?" He winced at the sound of the echo, but could anyone blame him? His house… sure it had been a bit breezy before, but now the roof was caved in, mold chewing on every bit of wood. He expected to see termites.

"Everything is like this in DigiQuartz," intoned a low, buzzing voice from behind. "When you return to your world… everything should be normal."

Zenjirou spun around and yelped, part from pain and the other from surprise and fear. "Who are you?" He pointed a shaking finger at a red and blue mechanical stag beetle of some kind, who regarded him with curiosity. Or maybe it was curiosity. It was hard to tell with his face being physically incapable of emotion by the looks of things.

"Sorry," he heard from the giant speaker on the monster's torso. "I am Ballistamon, one of the King's trusted comrades. Taiki thought something… was wrong… so he asked me to look. It is good… I found you."

"Do monsters run rampant here?" He felt sick and regretful. He wanted to go back and he'd barely been here ten minutes.

"In this place yes. In some cases anyway." The big metal hand patted Zenjjirou with surprising gentleness. "Do not worry, we will protect you until we can take you home. It should not be long."

The monster - digimon's- presence was surprisingly comfortable. "Thank you."

Ballistamon inclined his head. "Come with me. We should catch up to the others. You will be safer there."

Zenjirou swallowed and nodded, thinking of the attack only a couple of weeks before. It didn't take much to remember the pain. He limped after Balistamon's treads, looking about his home, or where it was in this world. "Is this… your world?"

"No, this world has been kidnapping our citizens and dragging them here, driving them insane... Shoutmon and I have been trying to find them and help them see reason, but it's been more difficult than we anticipated. Digimon are malleable, and this world attracts baser impulses." The slow, easy voice of the beetle somehow made everything seem a lot more reasonable than it probably was.

Of course, then he saw a giant blue dragon carry a teenager away, both of them screaming at each other. That kind of ruined everything for him.

Though, in retrospect, seeing Taiki on a golden dragon… man… thing…? Didn't really help either.

He was very lucky he was not inclined to fainting spells.


	9. The Tail Skips the Wall

9\. The Tail Skips the Wall

"Tagiru, you idiot, I was trying to win!"

"So you tried to kill me instead!"

"Not my fault you just _had_ to stand that close!"

Taiki sighed and shook his head. "You really need to be more careful, you two!" At their unified outcry of disagreement, Taiki took an aspirin, not even bothering to hide it this time. He was often torn between amusement and exasperation with just Tagiru. Since he had a partner as wild as he was, it was almost too much for someone like him to deal with on his own. It was way too much for Shoutmon, because he had a kingdom to run. _And he's not that much better._

 _If only Yuu had come with,_ he thought. Then he dismissed the idea. Those two still got along like oil and water. It was like asking for the world to end about seven more times. Without the Code Crown as a set of poker chips.

"I'm just saying that-"

"You know, for having a growth spurt, your junior's brain ain't quite caught up with the rest of him." OmegaShoutmon shrank from his great golden form into his red one as he spoke, now barely reaching Taiki's waist. He spun his mic thoughtfully, as if contemplating how hard he could hit both high school student and partner over the head. Deciding to give it up as a bad job, he settled for swinging his microphone into their legs.

Taiki tried not to show how funny that was (he did have a small streak of sadism to him, he had to.) and turned around to the sound of Ballistamon's movements. "Oh welcome back," he said as his brain caught up with his eyes. "Is everything all righ-Zenjirou?!" He didn't move if only not to startle his poor flatmate into collapsing, because that sheen of sweat was obvious even from here. "Are you all right? What are you doing here?"

Zenjirou took a moment to answer. He was rather out of breath. Having to limp a relatively far distance in aggravating heat could do that to a person. "F-Following you of course," he managed to say once he had some air. "What do y-you think? You went into a flash of light! I couldn't just let you disappear like that." He went back to coughing.

Taiki was torn between being flattered and fondly exasperated. "You've seen Shoutmon by now Zenjirou. I'm fine. But thanks for worrying."

Zenjirou managed to fix him with an amused look. He already didn't believe him. Just what had Akari and Nene said to him? He'd have to find out later. "Shoutmon." Taiki let his expression sober again. Tagiru and Gumdramon went blessedly quiet. "Do you hear anymore Digimon in the area?"

Shoutmon shut his eyes and they all stood in an awkward silence. Then Shoutmon opened his eyes. "Nope. Not them or the crystals we've been seeing lately."

Taiki's shoulders sagged at last with relief. "Good. That's enough for today then. We can check back next time. For now, we should get back, Tagiru especially." He crossed his arms. "You shouldn't have come all the way here in the first place."

Tagiru made a face. "Someone's gotta look out for you, Taiki-san!"

"Shoutmon has been doing fine and I've spent most of my time working." Taiki kept his voice patient, but really. He was perfectly capable of taking care of himself, and he especially didn't need his junior to worry about him, not from all the way back in Tokyo. "I do a lot less reckless acts than you Tagiru. Don't worry," he said, to soften the wince the blow. "I'm fine. You should get home before your parents worry."

Tagiru perked up quickly and nodded. He picked up his own red Xros Loader, looking all too eager to be cool for an instant. "Gumdramon, super evolve!"

Taiki could almost hear Zenjirou's jaw drop and he couldn't help his smile.


End file.
